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Referencing Screen control from within component

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Posted on by PowerThink1

I'm trying to better understand the capabilities described by this announcement last year: Canvas components can now access app scope directly | Microsoft Power Apps

I've created a canvas component, set it to access the App Scope as described in the article above, but I can't figure out how to reference/access controls in the app. A simple example would be to trigger a button in the parent screen, so I was thinking something like "Select(Screen1.Button1);" would work, but it doesn't. Any ideas how I would reference a button in the parent screen?

Note: I have successfully seen the ability to share global variables with the app scope enabled, so I know the fundamentals are working.

I was assuming this feature would take away the dependence on input/output parameters- so I'm not looking for answers on how to utilize those.

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BCBuizer 22,654 Super User 2026 Season 1 on at

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Hi @PowerThink1 ,

I don't think it is possible to reference controls through a screen. Hence the need for all controls to have a unique identifier.

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RandyHayes 76,299 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@PowerThink1

In general, using App scope in the component pretty much breaks the concept of a component. It should be autonomous and able to stand alone in any app. Having it rely on a control in an app will not allow that.

Although there are times that you just want to componentize something JUST for one app, it is still best to observe the general rules for components.

In your scenario, I would recommend instead creating a Behavioral Action on your component (like an OnSelect), then when the component is used in your app, set the formula on the OnSelect to Select(Button1).

I hope this is helpful for you.

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PowerThink1 5 on at

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Thanks @BCBuizer and @RandyHayes for the replies.

@RandyHayes I generally think your advice makes the most sense, although with a local component it's often pretty coupled to the host app already. I am still really curious to at least understand what was mean by the note in the article I cited:

In today’s installment, we are enabling a canvas component to directly access variables, collections, controls, and tabular data sources from its host app
If you have seen any further documentation or examples on how host (parent Screen) controls could be referenced I'd love to see that!

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RandyHayes 76,299 Super User 2024 Season 1 on at

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@PowerThink1

Well, going back to what you had tried Select(Screen1.Button1) would not have been relevant anyway. You don't reference the controls in that way. You can only have 1 Button1 in your app. All controls are global in scope, so you should have been able to simply do a Select(Button1)

So, the moral of the story is - if you are creating a local component only that will not be reused and you have that option on for components, then you would simply access any global control in your app from in the component.

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PowerThink1 5 on at

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Thanks @RandyHayes - I can confirm that doesn't work for me. Using a direct reference like Select(Button1) causes the following error, which led me to think maybe there was another way to reference it (it is actually Button3 in my example):

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